


one wave short of a shipwreck

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Series: Rime Royal [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Planned Pregnancy, Post-War, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 07:42:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: A family can be a soldier, a spy, a droid, and their three friends.





	one wave short of a shipwreck

**I.**

They all knew the end of the war would be difficult for Cassian, and none knew it better than K-2SO, in his own estimation. All of them had certain inconvenient adaptations to make, of course, but none possessed quite the same disadvantages as Cassian.

After all, the Guardians of the Whills and Bodhi Rook had functioned in civilian status for longer periods of their respective existences than not, and in any case typically served in non-combat capacities; Jyn Erso spent years of her early maturity as a petty thief, with few aspirations beyond the convenience of the moment; K-2SO’s own security systems were not specifically programmed for war, however useful his contributions. But Cassian retained no alternate data.

“If you are considering a return to Coruscant,” he informed Jyn—who, by this point, K-2SO classified as a) an occasional threat to his decisions, b) a frequent co-conspirator, and c) generally the organic counterpart to himself—“then the probability of assimilation to human-typical behaviour may be elevated, but—”

“We’re not typical,” she said in her abrupt way, “and I’m thinking of something quieter.”

With more relief than he cared to articulate, K-2SO said, “I concur.”

**II.**

Cassian welcomed peace—he  _did_. It was only difficult because it was so new and unfamiliar, and he didn’t know how people went about making choices without significant purposes in mind; and, when he felt like being honest with himself, because everything that had ever troubled him seemed to come cascading down at once, leaving him as much on edge as in his deepest covers, or alternately as blank as after a murder, like he controlled his body through some remote mechanized system.

He knew why Jyn wanted to hole up in a distant corner of the galaxy, backed by Kay. He didn’t talk about it, none of them did, but he knew, and they all knew that, too. Even so, while he might have taken it as insulting or embarrassing—and did, a little—he realized that he wasn’t … he wouldn’t … that they all looked for a deeper peace than the Republic’s.

None of them cared for the unfamiliar at any rate, or for people beyond their tight circle of family. If he sometimes felt raw terror or utter vacancy at nothing, Jyn could turn furious at the drop of a pin, all three ready to spring into action, and—some quiet really would be best, for all of them.

**III.**

To Jyn’s profound relief, Cassian steadied after the first terrifying crash: not soon, but sooner than she’d anticipated, from what she saw with the Partisans. They saw Bodhi often, Baze and Chirrut often enough, but not many others, the three of them scraping through one day after another on a planet well beyond Scarif and Tatooine, and a house as safe as Saw Gerrera’s daughter, an Imperial security droid—and eventually, a Rebel spy—could make it.

After the first few months, or perhaps a year or two (Jyn didn’t remember that period with any kind of exactness), they accepted some tenuous contact with the authorities they trusted most. Their familiarity with countless protocols across countless systems turned out to be more valuable than either ever expected, and almost inevitably, they found themselves tracking down more information for Mothma, Organa, Willard, the rest. But they stayed away from any hubs of activity for a long time, and would only pass through when absolutely necessary for a good while longer than that.

Sometimes, Jyn could almost see the fault lines behind Cassian’s eyes fading, if not vanishing; sometimes, Jyn felt the same thing in her own mind, gradations forming between contentment and joy, irritation and rage, like something snapped growing back together.

She knew they’d be all right, in the end.

**IV.**

During the war, Jyn and Cassian never thought of children; privately, they were appalled that other Rebels did, actively choosing to bring probable victims into the galaxy. Princess Leia, say: they’d had a better opinion of her than that, all the more with the unsteady life, in the thick of war and then reconstruction, that she and Solo would bring to any child, and on top of it, the galaxy’s laser-focused scope on her family;—certainly nothing about Ben Organa Solo led them to alter their judgment.

During the war, they also never  _wanted_  children, pragmatics aside; the idea belonged to a remote and unreal picture of the future, not the actual life they’d carved for themselves in the galaxy as it was.

That formed their disinclination more than any personal antipathy; Jyn liked children, Kay only dimly grasped the concept of them, and if Cassian had never cared much about any particular child, he cared deeply about their welfare in general.

After the war, struggling with an unfamiliar galaxy and their own minds, they didn’t soon think of it, either; even later,  _all right_  never did mean children for them. It only made children possible, in a distant way, instead of an idea to be instantly rejected, even in thought.

By then, they had developed the habit of putting their thoughts into words, when it mattered: so when the idea first drifted to mind, they talked of it, and settled on the only conclusion they could allow— _maybe, someday._

**V.**

Bodhi had lived a life of frequent and staggering surprises. Few, however, shocked him so much as an occasion about eleven years after Scarif, when he reached Jyn and Cassian’s in time for dinner, and she announced over the table,

“We’re reproducing, by the way.”

Bodhi stared at her, mind struggling to shape its understanding around this.

“You’re pregnant?!”

“Yes,” they said, the unspoken ‘obviously’ clinging to their chorus.

Bodhi sat very still, struggling to grasp the very prospect of this, much less of Jyn and Cassian as parents to an actual human.

_“Why?”_

**VI.**

Baze only had so many pleasures in life, but one of them was realized when Bodhi blurted out upon finding them in the Temple,

“Did you know that Jyn’s having a baby?”

Chirrut looked absolutely gobsmacked; Baze felt sure he did, too—he certainly felt it—but that could only take a distant second to the pure beauty of that moment.

“No,” Chirrut admitted. “You do mean Jyn Erso?”

Since they didn’t know any other Jyns, Baze just rolled his eyes and muttered,

“Didn’t think they’d be that careless.”

“Kaytuesso says they’ve been planning for almost three years,” said Bodhi, with a sideways glance at Chirrut and a tentative grin. “Well, it’s Jyn and Cassian—of course they have.”

**VII.**

“You should increase your intake of iron,” Kay told Jyn disapprovingly.

“Thanks for your concern,” said Jyn, “though I’m not sure you know what a child is.”

Kay, nearly vibrating, snapped, “You are  _hosting Cassian’s next iteration._ ”

Somehow, this didn’t bother Jyn nearly as much as she would have anticipated; she and Kay had a good relationship these days, but she doubted that even the child could love Cassian as much as Kay did with every wire of his circuitry.

“You realize that they’re going to have as much of me in them as Cassian?” she asked, idly curious.

“Your genetic contribution to the iteration is acceptable,” said Kay, “given that you were created by two of the most accomplished human minds in the galaxy.”

Jyn could easily think of at least a half-dozen sarcastic replies; instead, she laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is (maybe?) one of my less obvious pilferings from Queen, this one from "I'm Going Slightly Mad." That particular choice for this fic is truly a mystery.
> 
> (More seriously: the line in its original context is one of several referring to the narrator's descent into insanity, all describing him as [x] thing short of the full version of something. Ergo, "one wave short of a shipwreck" means "not all there." But there's also an implication, particularly in that line, of ... instability without quite reaching disaster, so I liked the double meaning for a breakdown/recovery arc.)


End file.
